BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 9 : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BEN PASSED TEST THIS TIME AROUND

When it was revealed that the Canadian Olympic Assn. had not tested sprinter Ben Johnson for more than six months before the 1988 Olympics at Seoul, where he tested positive for a steroid after winning the 100 meters, officials, rightfully so, were embarrassed.

They did not make the same mistake before the Barcelona Games.

Upon learning that Johnson would leave for Europe on July 8, the COA ordered him, through a post-scandal program of target testing, to submit to a urinalysis on July 6. Two days later, before he left for the airport, he was targeted again.

That was not the end of it.

Thursday night, 12 hours before the first round of the 100 meters, the COA sent a team to the athletes’ village to collect samples from sprinters Johnson, Bruny Surin and Atlee Mahorn. Through a special arrangement with a laboratory, all three samples were tested, and the athletes cleared, before they were allowed to settle into their starting blocks.

* This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.